I am a mechanical engineer and Six Sigma Black Belt by training, and have come to love the beautiful game in my adult life. I turned to my numerical training after becoming a Seattle Sounders FC and Arsenal supporter in 2009 in the hopes of accelerating my understanding of the new game I loved. I've been writing my own blog for over two years, and have written for such outlets as "The Tomkins Times", "The Transfer Price Index", and Howler Magazine. My goal is to advance the understanding of the English Premier League and Major League Soccer through numerical means.

E Pluribus Sounders (Part 1): Immigrant & NASL Roots

The relationship between club and community was solid, and the club would outgrow the confines of Memorial Stadium within two years of joining the league.

Memorial Stadium during an NASL Sounders match

The Sounders had established themselves within the city and NASL by the time the city finished the $258 million Kingdome in 1976 (all financial figures are quoted in 2011 dollars). They relocated to the new stadium, and hold the distinction of hosting the first sporting event in it. The more than 52,000 people in attendance witnessed a 3-1 loss to a Pele-led NY Cosmos. The Sounders would continue to draw great crowds throughout nearly their entire NASL existence. From 1976 to 1981 the Sounders would average more than 20,000 fans per home match, nearly doubling the average NASL match attendance. The Sounders qualified for the NASL playoffs every year except one between 1975 and 1982. The large crowds the NASL and MLS Sounders drew over the years never surprised Frank MacDonald.

This has always been a big event town, and if you showed [Seattleites] that you had a quality product on the soccer field people would come out. That goes for college, that goes for FC Seattle, and it’s held true for the teams we’ve had here in the top divisions in America.

The accessibility to the players and coaching staff helped achieve such high attendance numbers, while the team’s success on the pitch sustained it.

The team would reach its peak from the 1977 through 1982 seasons. During that time they would appear in two Soccer Bowls (1977 and 1982), but it was their 1980 season where they were perhaps most dominant. They would end up setting the NASL record for wins (25), and finish with the second overall best record in the history of the league (0.781 compared to the 1983 Vancouver Whitecap’s 0.800 record earned while playing two fewer matches). Players like Kevin Bond, Alan Hudson, and Steve Daley would be remembered for their beautiful play during an era that would see the Sounders become perennial championship contenders, yet the cruel nature of the playoffs meant they never won a championship to cap off their amazing form. Nonetheless, the fans felt their team couldn’t be beat, a sentiment summed up by lifelong resident and NASL-era season ticket holder Bill Creech.

We had a team as good as anybody, certainly as good as the Cosmos. As a fan, I thought we had a team as good as any in the world!

Much to the dismay of the fans in Seattle, the team’s and the league’s success would be fleeting. By 1978 the league expanded to 24 teams. The over-expansion combined with a lack of financial viability is largely blamed for the league’s demise. By the end of 1984 the league dissolved, and for many American sports fans the idea of professional soccer in the United States became a distant thought. The Sounders would disappear a year earlier, as a change in ownership around 1981 led to a series of missteps that made the team unviable after the 1983 season’s conclusion. The Sounders and NASL may have folded, but the spirit of the recreational and semi-professional players in the area would keep the sport alive until it was readmitted to top-flight soccer twenty five years later.

Part two of this three part series explores how the recreational and semi-professional players of Seattle would keep the sport alive until it was able to return to top flight US soccer. Meanwhile, the wider sports landscape in Seattle was so bad that it was screaming out for a homegrown success story. The stage was set for a motivated organization to take advantage of the situation and turn it into a positive one for the sport of soccer.

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Fantastic article! Although I’m a big supporter of the MLS Sounders, I’ve had little exposure to our club’s history. Very interesting stuff and I’m definitely looking forward to your next piece on the pre-MLS/USL years.

Nice article Zach. I run the NASL Alumni Association, and I have an archive of NASL videos on my web site: www.DaveBrett.com. I must have at least 50 NASL Sounders videos. If you want to see any of them, just let me know. My email address is on the site.

Hi, Zach. Thanks for the article. One thing I would like to point out is that Seattle’s soccer history stretches much farther back than 60 years. You did say 60+ years, but the beginning of your article seems to imply that Seattle’s soccer culture sprung up out of nowhere after WWII in the 1950′s.

The local soccer league GSSL stretches back nearly a century or more, a few decades before WWII. There is also a yearly tournament contested for the George Washington Trophy which was first awarded in 1927. Here is the GSSL page for the tournament: http://gssl.org/gwt.htm There were also local teams playing at the turn of the 20th century against other teams from around the Puget Sound, British Columbia and Oregon.

I also forgot to mention the Pacific Coast Soccer League. It is primarily a British Columbia League, but it has also featured Washington State teams throughout its history. In fact, a Seattle team was a founding member in 1908.